Neighbour snatches pauper�s plot
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Monday May 26, 2014 16:24
There are fears that the poor woman’s signature may have been forged to look like she had consented to giving away her land after her signature was found on some documents at the Broadhurst Court.
The land board officials in Mogoditshane do not care about her troubles either, while the village chief also does not care.
The once owner of the yard, 57-year-old Senanao Mosweunyane is now out in the cold and renting a one roomed house and living on Ipelegeng.
The land dispossession was swift and cruel when in October last year the pauper was thrown out of her hut naked. She was still bathing when her neighbour, name withheld, stormed into the hut in the company of police officers and told her to vacate the hut immediately.
It has since surfaced that the so called law enforcement officers who helped Mosweunyane’s neighbor dispossess her of her plot, may not be real after all after Mogoditshane police distanced themselves from the operation.
The now landless Mosweunyane, a mother of two, says at the time the police officers identified themselves as court bailiffs although there was no order of the Court shown to her when she was being thrown out of her hut.
She said that her neighbour who was accompanied by unidentified police officers, started insulting and throwing her property out of the house. She said that when she tried to plead with the police officers to help they also added insult to injury ordering her to get out of the house as it belonged to that woman.
“I was shocked when my neighbour barged in my house without knocking. At the time I was bathing so she pushed me out of the house when I was naked. What pains me most is that she did all that before the police officers whom she brought along but they did not intervene,” the poor old woman narrated sadly.
According to Mosweunyane, her new neighbour had tried to kick her out of her yard a few years before after she was allocated her plot near Mosweunyane but she called the land board personnel to help.
She said that at the time, the land board officials who worked in the sub land board told her neighbour that she could not expand her plot into another person’s plot (Mosweunyane’s plot) as they were two different plots and that all plots were measured according to land board regulations.
The mother of two said that she was one of the people who were on the presidential amnesty (squatters who had to compensate the government for their illegal plots). She said that when her new neighbour started interrogating her, she asked land board personnel to intervene but they promised her that she like other applicants was on the waiting list. She said that after the day of the ordeal she went back to the sub land board crying for help but was surprised to hear that her name was no longer in the system.
“I consulted land board secretary Anthony Bashingi who told me that it was possible for someone to expand their yards if they wanted as long as they had consulted them. He then started to avoid me as I could clearly see that he was siding with that woman,” Mosweunyane narrated.
She said that she was surprised when her neighbour slapped her with a court order claiming that the accused (Mosweunyane) was refusing to leave the compound. She said that she was later ordered by Broadhurst Magistrate Court, Chief Magistrate Taboka Slave to vacate her plot.
The woman who could manage her life well living in her room running a tuck-shop now rents a room and works at Ipelegeng where she pays rent and cannot afford to feed herself.
According to a witness who preferred to be anonymous, after hearing about Mosweunyane’s ordeal he decided to help her as he realised that both Mogoditshane Sub Land Board officials and her neighbour took advantage of her as she was illiterate and did not know her rights. He said that he assisted the victim to approach the courts after learning that the right procedures were not followed by her abusers. He said that they were surprised when they found signed legal documents at the magistrate’s office, which indicated that Mosweunyane signed them whilst she denied ever having seen them.
He said that he suspected that the plaintiff had a hand in the fraud as she knew that Mosweunyane could not read or write and did not know her rights.
“Those people took advantage of Mosweunyane’s misfortune as they knew that they could easily cheat her because she is not educated. I also did some digging and discovered that the sub land board was ignoring this issue, as they know that they played a part in this case. I had learnt that one of them was paid P10,000 to evict the poor woman from her plot,” he added.
The Monitor could not get the sub land board Secretary Bashingi’s comment as he referred us to speak to Kweneng Land Board spokesperson Sandy Mosarwe. In his comment, Mosarwe said, “As Kweneng Land Board we are not aware of that particular case you are referring to.”
He said that according to the land board procedure, any plot either commercial or residential, if an individual would like to extend their plot they have to apply for extension. He said that the board would then sit down and make evaluations where they would then decide if they approve the application or not.
Meanwhile Tsolamosese headman Manyane Mokgalagadi claimed ignorance about the matter. “I do not know about that issue. If I may have heard about it I might have forgotten.”